Companion Review – ‘A Bloody Bit of Fun’

From the genre-defining image of Maria and her chrome curves in the 1927s Metropolisto Jude Law’s gigolo joe i AI artificial intelligenceand Ana de Armas’ Sultry Joi in Blade Runner 2049hot robots have never been out of style. But with the advent of AI chatbots ready to acknowledge their love, the futurism of Spike Jonze’s Her Seems closer than ever. The next logical step is Companionwhere even your Android partner’s intelligence level can be customized with an app on your phone. God help us.

Companionproduced by the team behind Barbarianopens with a prologue that is a nice tribute to a Fembot Classic, 1975’s The Stepford Wives, and its famous supermarket sequence. Iris (Heretics‘s Sophie Thatcher), incongruously styled throughout as a mid-century doll with a miniature beehive lady, walks dreamily through a hallway pushing a shopping cart. She locks eyes with Josh (a Smarmy Jack Quaid), charmingly annoying a display of oranges. It’s the cutest of meet cutes, and in voiceover, Iris describes the blissful experience of finding meaning in her life the day she met him, surpassed only by the day she killed him.

For those annoyed by the poster and trailer revealing Iris’ Bionic Biology, cool your jets. The film doesn’t exactly keep it a secret, with the script dropping observations about Iris being “built that way” and a “beautiful creation” from the start. She certainly feels like an outsider at the luxurious Lakeside Lodge, where she and Josh have been invited by his friends for the weekend. It’s owned by seedy Russian sugar daddy Sergey, played by a pleasantly daft Rupert friend with a perma-tan and mullet.

Where Companion Really gets going is in its splashier and surprising second half. The film pivots away from the obvious revelation of Iris’ origins and becomes a noir-ish chase through the woods with $12 million cash at stake as Iris makes a bid for freedom from her captor. There is some humor along the way, mostly via What we do in the shadows‘Harvey Guillén as Josh’s friend Eli, partnered with an adorable Lukas Gage as his Himbo boyfriend.

Although at first it appears that writer/director Drew Hancock is aiming for his own entry in the recent wave of ‘Patriarchy is Evil’ dark comedies with a sci-fi bent, as Don’t worry honey or Blink twiceit’s a strange relief from it Companion Don’t deal with anything more serious than realizing your girlfriend is a controlling asshole.